For Sale: Pieces of Polar Explorers' Dramatic Past

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A century after the golden age of polar exploration, ordinary
folks with some spending money and a taste for adventure — but
who'd rather forego the frostbite, starvation and killer-whale
attacks — can own a piece of the compelling story of humankind's
fevered race to the Earth's poles.

This week, Leski Auctions in Melbourne, Australia, is offering up
101 photographs, documents, books, letters, stamps, illustrations
and other memorabilia from polar journeys both
Arctic and Antarctic. Mementoes from many of polar
exploration's biggest names — Cook, Peary, Shackleton — are up
for sale. (Later this month, Christie's is selling a
well-preserved cracker that British explorer Ernest Shackleton
left behind in Antarctica during his first expedition to the
southernmost continent, from 1907 to 1909.)

Yet some of the priciest items on offer are photographs from the
famed
race to conquer the South Pole, which this year is
celebrating its centenary. The grueling contest pitted British
explorer Robert Falcon Scott against Norwegian explorer Roald
Amundsen, who claimed victory on Dec. 14, 1911 — a full month
before Scott's team arrived.

The race made Amundsen a hero. Scott never made it home.

Antarctic living

The photographs on the auction block tell Scott's side of the
story — a tale fraught with nationalism, narcissism, bravery,
sacrifice, and, ultimately, for Scott and several of his men, a
frigid and lonely death. [ See
photographs from Scott's expedition.]

"It's such a complicated story of meaningless failure at one
level and heroic transcendence on the other," said Ross MacPhee,
curator of vertebrate zoology at the American Museum of Natural
History, and author of the book, "Race to The End: Amundsen,
Scott, and the Attainment of the South Pole" (Sterling
Innovation, 2010).

For sale this week are more than a dozen images taken by Herbert
George Ponting, Scott's official photographer. Although many
images show daily life during the 1910 to 1912 expedition —
penguins, seals, desolate expanses of glittering ice —
several depict aspects of Scott's expedition that some have
pointed to as signs of foolhardy decisions that led to his
downfall.

One photograph shows some of the 19 Siberian ponies Scott brought
to Antarctica for the trek to the Pole. [ See
the horses here.]

"There's nothing for them to eat there, and they're herbivores,
so you can't feed them to each other like dogs," MacPhee said.

However, he added, horses weren't a totally outlandish choice.
Scott knew Shackleton had used horses in Antarctica — and they're
far stronger pack animals than dogs. "It was not a completely
ludicrous idea to use ponies, but on the other hand it wasn't a
great one either," MacPhee said.

Another photograph shows Scott seated at a desk in the
comfortably appointed "hut" the expedition built. The wooden
building,
which still stands today, was large enough to accommodate
nearly two dozen men, and was outfitted with piles of books, a
gramophone, and even a player piano.

Again, MacPhee explained, these were not senseless luxuries. The
team planned to be there for a long time. "And with the
vagaries of the weather — there's such a narrow window for
vessels to come and go — they had to prepare for every exigency,"
MacPhee said. "With those long Antarctic nights, you want to fill
them with something."

As shown in Ponting's photograph, Scott often filled his nights
by writing in his diary. The image was taken in early October
1911, just three weeks before Scott set off for the Antarctic
interior.

Antarctic death

Two-and-a-half months after they began, Scott, along with four of
his men, reached the South Pole on Jan. 17, 1912 — only to
discover a Norwegian flag standing at the spot. Ill-equipped, and
hampered by the tightening grip of the harsh Antarctic winter,
all five men perished on the return trek.

It is Scott's faithful records of his journey, uncovered near his
frozen corpse nearly 6 months after his death in March 1912, that
revealed the true fate of the men who set off to conquer the Pole
and never returned.

"The last three remaining companions soldiered on until the last
moment," MacPhee said. "You just have to be impressed with what
these fellows put up with."

Charles Leski, the man behind Leski auctions, said this week's
sale has special meaning. He himself was ensnared by the romance
of polar exploration as a young stamp collector in 1961, on the
50th anniversary of Australia's first Antarctic expedition; he
finally visited Antarctica in 2004.

"I felt ecstatic surrounded by such rare beauty, silence and a
sense of isolation," Leski said, adding that someday he hopes to
make it as far as the South Pole.

Although Scott didn't survive his own trek to the South Pole, he
did set a precedent that has little to do with purely
nationalistic glory.

"Scott was very, very keen on scientists taking part in his
expeditions, and it actually cost him to have these nonproductive
types along, who were just there to collect information," MacPhee
said.

Thanks, in part, to Scott's example, polar science has become a
priority, and an increasingly important one. "And we recognize
that now," MacPhee said, "how with climate change, the poles are
the bellwethers for what is going on."

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole research station is staffed with
scientists year-round; scientists have been working at the Pole
since the 1950s, when the
first permanent structure was built there.